T4-4-*- 


AMERIOAN  HIGHLANDERS • 
By  W.P.lkirkield. 


Methodist  Rev 
May, 1906* 


Library  of 
The  University  of  North  Carolina 


COLLECTION  OF 
NORTH  CAROLINIANA 


ENDOWED  BY 
JOHN  SPRUNT  HILL 
of  the  Class  of  1889 


410  Methodist  Review  [May 

Art.  V.— AMERICAN  HIGHLANDERS  AND  OUR  EDU- 
CATION MISSION  TO  THEM 

"Thou  wearest  upon  thy  forehead  clear 
The  freedom  of  the  mountaineer." 

Who  are  the  American  Highlanders  ?  Where  do  they  live  % 
What  of  them  ?  Of  the  Scotch  Highlanders,  Macaulay  once  said : 
"Not  one  gentleman  in  twenty  who  meets  at  Wills' s  Coffee  House 
in  London  knows  that  less  than  five  hundred  miles  away  there 
exists  such  a  condition  and  such  a  people  as  the  Scotch  High- 
landers." And  so  here  in  America.  Most  people  are  ignorant 
as  to  the  whereabouts,  the  character  and  life  of  the  several  millions 
of  sturdy,  high-souled,  clean-blooded  Anglo-Saxon  Highlanders  of 
the  Central  South.  As  the  mountain  ranges  where  they  dwell 
form  the  backbone  of  this  country,  so  these  Highlanders  of  native 
American  stock,  virile  in  faculty,  large  in  capacity,  of  free  and 
unbroken  spirit,  form  the  backbone  of  the  people.  They  are  found 
in  the  hill  and  mountain  country  of  Northern  Alabama  and 
Georgia,  Kentucky,  Tennessee,  North  Carolina,  South  Carolina, 
Virginia  and  West  Virginia.  It  is  a  region  about  six  hundred 
miles  long  and  three  hundred  miles  wide,  covered  with  noble 
mountains,  which  are  cut  up  by  swift  and  narrow  streams  into 
valleys,  gorges  and  coves.  Here  is  the  "land  of  the  sky."  And 
here  is  a  population  of  over  three  million,  more  than  that  of  half 
a  dozen  western  states  put  together.  Though  a  large  proportion 
are  illiterate  and  in  poverty,  me'ti&Me  "poor  whites"  does  not  fit 
them.  In  their  high-souled  independence,  the  spirit  of  these 
mountain  people  is  portrayed  in  the  lines  of  Mrs.  Hemans : 

"For  the  strength  of  the  hills  we  bless  thee, 

Our  God,  our  father's  God! 
Thou  hast  made  thy  children  mighty 

By  the  touch  of  the  mountain  sod; 
Thou  hast  fixed  our  ark  of  refuge 

Where  the  spoiler's  feet  ne'er  trod; 
For  the  strength  of  the  hills  we  bless  thee, 

Our  God,  our  father's  God!" 


Digitized  by  the  Internet  Archive 
in  2014 


https://archive.org/details/americanhighlandOOthir 


1906] 


American  Highlanders 


411 


Here  for  generations,  shut  off  from  civilization,  without  ade- 
quate schools,  and  often  with  an  illiterate  ministry,  hundreds  of 
thousands  of  these  people  have  lived  and  reared  their  children. 
Their  ancestry  traces  back  to  Colonial  times.  These  mountain 
walls  have  cut  them  off  from  the  rest  of  the  country.  Shut  up  in 
the  coves  and  valleys,  clinging  to  the  rough  mountain  sides,  cut 
off  from  an  advancing  civilization,  they  have  remained  a  primitive 
people,  living  as  their  fathers  lived,  with  their  quaint  forms  of 
speech  and  antiquated  tools  of  toil.  Here  is  found  the  largest 
percentage  of  people  in  the  nation  of  English  and  Scotch-Irish 
descent,  in  many  counties  averaging  from  ninety-four  to  ninety- 
six  per  cent.  Of  pure,  clean  blood,  uncontaminated  by  the  vices 
of  civilization,  they  love  their  native  hills.  They  are  children  of 
liberty.  In  the  Revolution  these  sturdy  patriots  saved  the  day  in 
the  crisis  at  King's  Mountain.  At  the  battle  of  Guilford  Court- 
house they  did  heroic  service.  Here  is  the  largest  percentage  of 
descendants  of  Revolutionary  soldiers.  Hundreds  of  families 
hold  government  land  titles,  coming  down  from  the  early  days  of 
the  Republic.  In  the  great  civil  strife  that  threatened  the  life  of 
the  nation,  from  these  mountains  140,000  volunteer  patriots,  loyal 
to  the  Union,  came  forth  at  the  call  of  Lincoln. 

These  mountain  people  are  also  of  fine  native  capacity.  Com- 
ing in  close  contact  with  the  region  reached  by  our  institutions 
among  the  white  people,  a  college  graduate,  who  is  a  man  of 
affairs  and  a  keen  student  of  character,  said  of  them :  "They 
need  only  an  introduction  to  civilization  to  prove  themselves  equal 
to  any  men  in  the  world.  I  regard  these  people  as  the  finest  rough 
material  in  the  world,  and  consider  one  of  them,  modeled  into 
available  shape,  worth  to  the  world  a  dozen  ordinary  people." 
And  yet  to-day  hundreds  of  thousands  of  these  patriots,  Protes- 
tants, Americans,  are  more  ignorant  and  more  destitute  of  the 
opportunities  which  go  with  education  than  any  other  body  of 
Anglo-Saxon  people  on  the  face  of  the  earth.  Only  one  who  has 
given  his  life  for  this  virile  yet  backward  people  has  a  right  to 
speak  as  to  their  condition.  Such  a  one  is  the  Rev.  H.  P.  Smith, 
Superintendent  of  Missions  for  the  Asheville  Presbytery  of  the 


412 


Methodist  Review 


[May 


Presbyterian  Church.  In  an  official  pamphlet  on  Some  Kesulta 
of  Mission  Work  in  the  Mountains  of  North  Carolina  he  deplores 
the  fact  that  some  writers  have  not  discriminated  between  the 
cultured  population  of  the  valley  sections  and  the  illiterate  classes 
that  dwell  in  the  remote  coves  and  on  the  rugged  mountain  slopes. 
He  gives  some  such  alarming  facts  as  these:  (1)  In  a  certain 
mountain  county  there  are  7,988  white  children,  of  school  age, 
3,272  of  whom  have  never  attended  school.  It  would  take  fifteen 
or  twenty  more  schoolhouses  to  accommodate  them.  (2)  In 
another  county  31  white  voters  of  every  100  cannot  read  or  write. 
(3)  Many  children  are  kept  from  school  because  their  parents 
are  not  able  to  purchase  books.  Numbers  of  families  in  these 
remote  districts  do  not  handle  as  much  as  $10  in  cash  during  the 
entire  year.  What  they  cannot  make  at  home  they  get  by  barter. 
"We  have  visited  many  homes  in  which  none  of  the  inmates  could 
read,  and  the  Bible  was  not  there  because  they  could  not  read." 
As  an  example  of  conditions  in  the  mountains,  take  Yancey 
County,  North  Carolina.  It  is  in  the  heart  of  the  Appalachian 
chain.  Here  is  Mount  Mitchell,  the  highest  point  in  the  United 
States  east  of  the  Eocky  Mountains.  Here  are  large  forest  stores. 
The  county  is  rich  in  metals  and  minerals,  with  one  of  the  finest 
veins  of  mica  in  the  country.  Of  these  mountaineer  people  there 
is  a  population  of  11,464,  an  average  of  38  to  the  square  mile  ; 
11,178  are  native-born  whites,  3  foreign-born,  and  283  are  colored. 
Of  the  2,359  of  voting  age,  31  per  cent  of  the  white  and  63  of  the 
colored  are  illiterate.  The  school  population  of  the  county  is 
4,418.  Of  these  only  2,566  are  enrolled  in  the  schools.  The 
average  daily  attendance  is  1,949 — only  44  per  cent  of  the  school 
population.  In  the  white  schools  the  average  length  of  the  session 
is  65  days,  but  28  days  is  the  average  number  attended  by  each 
white  child  of  school  age.  Forty-nine  teachers  are  employed  at 
average  salaries  of  less  than  $22  per  month.1 

Think  of  the  startling  revelations  of  the  last  census.   Of  the 
native  white  population  of  the  whole  country,  ten  years  of  age  and 
over,  the  South  has  24  per  cent,  but  of  the  native  illiteracy  of  the 
i  Bulletin  of  tne  Southern  Education  Board,  May,  1902. 


1906] 


American  Highlanders 


413 


nation  the  South  has  64  per  cent.  "There  are  in  the  United 
States,"  says  Edgar  Gardner  Murphy  in  Problems  of  the  Present 
South,  "231  counties  in  which  twenty  per  cent  and  over  of  the 
white  men  of  voting  age  cannot  read  and  write.  Of  these  231 
counties,  210  are  in  our  Southern  states,"  and  most  of  them  are 
in  the  mountain  region.  This  fact  should  awaken  the  nation :  that 
in  the  South  "there  are  ten  million  whites  of  native  American 
stock,  having  3,500,000  children  of  school  age,  with  few  excep- 
tions, unprovided  with  good  schools."  Seventeen  millions  live  in 
the  country,  outside  of  towns  of  1,000  inhabitants.  Only  60  per 
cent  of  these  children  were  enrolled  in  the  schools  in  1900.  The 
average  daily  attendance  is  only  70  per  cent  of  the  enrollment. 
Forty-two  per  cent  are  actually  at  school.  One  white  child  in 
every  five  is  left  wholly  illiterate.  The  average  citizen  in  North  ' 
Carolina  gets  only  2.6  years  of  schooling;  of  Alabama  2.4  years. 
Says  Dr.  Dabney,  for  years  president  of  the  University  of  Ten- 
nessee, "In  the  Southern  states,  in  schoolhouses  costing  an  average 
of  $276  each,  we  are.  giving  the  children  in  actual  attendance 
five  cents'  worth  of  education  a  day  for  eighty-seven  days  only  in 
the  year."  In  every  Southern  state  there  has  been  in  the  last 
thirty  years,  an  increase  of  white  males  twenty  years  old  and  over, 
who  can  neither  read  nor  write.  In  1890  there  were  in  all  these 
states  175,883  more  illiterate  native  white  men  than  in  1870. 

Another  revelation  of  the  census  of  1900  is  this:  That  the 
percentage  of  illiteracy  among  the  native-born  sons  of  native  par- 
ents is  5.9,  while  that  among  the  native-born  sons  of  foreign 
parents  is  only  2  per  cent.  What  a  startling  fact !  That  we  have 
been  reaching  through  our  schools  foreign-born  more  effectively 
than  our  native-born  children.  And  why?  Simply  because  the 
foreigners,  now  coming  in  from  the  south  of  Europe  at  the  rate  of 
more  than  a  million  a  year,  land  and  live  in  the  great  cities,  where 
there  is  a  school  and  a  teacher  for  every  child.  The  single  city  of 
Boston  last  year  appropriated  more  than  twice  as  much  for  the 
schools  of  its  people — over  70  per  cent  foreign — as  any  southern 
state  except  Texas.  In  the  three  states  of  Alabama,  North  Caro- 
lina and  South  Carolina  the  average  term  of  schooling  for  each 


414 


Methodist  Review 


[May 


child  is  2.5  years.  There  are  actually  in  school  only  42  per  cent  of 
the  children.  In  North  and  South  Carolina  the  average  value  of  a 
school  property  is  $179 ;  the  average  salary  of  a  teacher  per  month 
is  $23.28.  While  this  nation  is  putting  millions  into  battleships 
to  protect  us  against  some  imaginary  foe,  while  Alaskan  children 
in  government  schools  have  $17.85  per  capita  annually  for  their 
education,  millions  of  children  in  the  South  are  in  mental  starva- 
tion for  lack  of  efficient  schooling. 

The  nation  with  its  millions  of  foreign  immigrants,  that  now 
dominate  certain  sections,  needs  this  strain  of  pure  Anglo-Saxon 
blood  to  reinforce  the  depleted  blood  of  our  people.  Protestant 
to  the  core,  they  have  the  poorest  educational  chance  of  any  white 
people  in  America.  While  the  Roman  Catholic  millions,  in  the 
great  cities,  have  the  best  schools,  these  Protestant  Americans 
have  the  worst.  With  their  pure  Americanism  and  their  intense 
patriotism  they  have  in  them  capacity  for  immense  service  to  the 
nation.  With  the  politics  of  our  corrupted  cities,  filled  with  their 
millions  of  un- Americanized  foreigners,  and  with  the  aggressive- 
ness of  the  Roman  Catholic  hierarchy  in  national  life,  we  may  yet 
see  the  day  when  the  sturdy  Protestantism  and  uncorrupted  Amer- 
icanism of  these  mountain  patriots  may  be  sorely  needed  to  safe- 
guard Republican  institutions.  The  great  need  of  the  South  is 
trained  teachers,  preachers,  mothers  and  homemakers  who  have 
come  in  touch  with  the  larger  life  through  our  schools.  Prom  our 
Grant  University  at  Athens  and  Chattanooga,  with  its  twenty- 
one  affiliated  academies  scattered  throughout  this  region  from 
rAlabama  to  the  sea,  the  Freedmen's  Aid  and  Southern  Education 
Society  is  sending  forth  teachers  and  Christian  workers  to  multi- 
tudes of  people  who  are  eager  for  light  and  help. 


I 

i 

m 
M 


UNIVERSITY  OF  N.C.  AT  CHAPEL  HILL 


00033979428 

FOR  USE  ONLY  IN 
THE  NORTH  CAROLINA  COLLECTION 


Form  No.  A-368,  Rev.  8/95 


